King.com Reply Regarding there Trademark Claim Against Banner SAGA

Recently there has been a lot of talk regarding King.com the owners of the Candy Crush, and there Trademark request against the company Stoic Entertainment for there use of ‘SAGA’ in there title ‘Banner SAGA’

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We reached out to King.com and made contact with the Senior Director of Communications, Global and this is what we got told,

Thanks for getting in contact.

We wanted to come back to you regarding Banner Saga and protection of IP rights.

King hasn’t and isn’t trying to stop Banner Saga from using its name.

We don’t have any concerns that Banner Saga is trying build on our brand or our content and so we’re not asking them to change their name.

Rather, we have asked them not to trademark it as their IP. Banner Saga can continue to use the name.

This is an important issue for King because we already have a series of games where ‘Saga’ is key to the brand , and our players associate it with a King game; Candy Crush Saga, Bubble Witch Saga, Pet Rescue Saga, Farm Heroes Saga and so on. All of these titles have already faced substantive trademark and copyright issues with clones.

Like any company, we do need to take appropriate steps to protect our IP, both now and in the future. In this case, that means preserving ourability to protect our rights in cases where other developers may try to use the Saga mark in a way which infringes our IP rights and causes player confusion. If we had not opposed Banner Saga¹s trade mark application (not its name), it would be much easier for real copy cats to argue that their use of ‘Saga’ was legitimate.

We reached out to Stoic and this is what we got

Two years ago, the three of us at Stoic set out to make an epic viking game: The Banner Saga. We did, and people loved it, so we’re making another one. We won’t make a viking saga without the word Saga, and we don’t appreciate anyone telling us we can’t. King.com claims they’re not attempting to prevent us from using The Banner Saga, and yet their legal opposition to our trademark filing remains. We’re humbled by the outpouring of support and honored to have others stand with us for the right to their own Saga. We just want to make great games.